


He who wears the crown rules the kingdom

by midnightflame



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adopted Children, Family Fluff, Flower Crowns, M/M, Picnics, Tickling, de-aged garrison trio, sheith parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-23 06:45:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13184568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightflame/pseuds/midnightflame
Summary: “All three of you are right,” Shiro replies as he runs his fingers around the unadorned crown in his hand. He has yet to apply any flowers to it. No one told him decisions like this were of utmost importance, though Pidge had politely corrected him that one could not simplythrowflowers together. This is art. Choices should be madeconsciously. He’s still not sure where she got all that from, but he remains proud of her nonetheless. “All sorts of royalty wear crowns.”“Does this make us royalty then?”Lance is sitting there with a bunch of baby blue hydrangeas in one hand and a fistful of red daisies in the other, but his attention is fixed on Shiro. His gaze is eager, waiting for confirmation of this fact he has already deemed truth. After all, does the proof not exist in his hands, a crown half-made and waiting to be worn?Shiro laughs, and maybe he shouldn’t, but he’s laughing and nodding his head all the same.  “Do you want to be a prince, Lance?”





	He who wears the crown rules the kingdom

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is the last of my prompts and probably the cutest out of all of them, written for the ever wonderful [Tamara](https://twitter.com/shirokoganee) over on twitter! <3 She had asked for Sheith family making flower crowns during a picnic, and it sort of evolved into this little piece. I hope you enjoy it and thank you again for the lovely prompt!
> 
> ALSO HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY! <3 <3 <3

There is something almost divine about controlled chaos. It’s like watching the world put a few tears into the hems of its story, loosen a few seams, and get grass stains over the pristine fabric you swore you would keep clean, only to realize life happens in the moments that threaten to break it all down. And somehow. . . _somehow_ you still come out whole. The chaotic elements still rage, the story keeps progressing, and you stand there, looking at it unfolding there before you, wondering how you managed to get so much right in the midst of it all. 

“Crowns make kings!”

“And queens!”

“What about princes?”

The air is warm, newly touched with spring’s first breaths and full of promise. Above, the sky is a cloudless blue, as open and wide-reaching as a child’s dreams, and the sun shines down with a relentless sort of glimmer. But beneath the large oak tree of their backyard, Shiro counts the shade among his blessings for the day. Others include the fact that the picnic blanket is still spread out relatively unbunched and unstained, that only one cup of lemonade had been spilled that afternoon, and that all three of his children would rather debate the politics of making crowns rather than who got what flower to construct them. 

“All three of you are right,” Shiro replies as he runs his fingers around the unadorned crown in his hand. He has yet to apply any flowers to it. No one told him decisions like this were of the utmost importance, though Pidge had politely corrected him that one could not simply _throw_ flowers together. This is art. Choices should be made _consciously_. He’s still not sure where she got all that from, but he remains proud of her nonetheless. “All sorts of royalty wear crowns.”

“Does this make us royalty then?”

Lance is sitting there with a bunch of baby blue hydrangeas in one hand and a fistful of red daisies in the other, but his attention is fixed on Shiro. His gaze is eager, waiting for confirmation of this fact he has already deemed truth. After all, does the proof not exist in his hands, a crown half-made and waiting to be worn?

Shiro laughs, and maybe he shouldn’t, but he’s laughing and nodding his head all the same. “Do you want to be a prince, Lance?”

His lips purse, eyebrow arching. Dropping his gaze to the flowers in his hands, Lance shrugs. If an eight-year-old had the notion of _fuck it_ , Shiro is certain that would have been the thought behind that gesture. 

“Only if Hunk can be one too.”

Pidge’s head snaps up at that, her eyes narrowing in on her brother. “What about me?!”

“I thought you wanted to be a magician, Pidge,” Shiro says calmly, hoping his demeanor might stall whatever impending storm is brewing in her mind.

“Yeah, that’s what you said!” Lance chimes in, complete with the requisite stuck-out tongue and a devil’s grin that would’ve made Satan himself bellow with unadulterated pride. 

“Magicians can still wear crowns.”

Both Lance and Pidge turn to look at Hunk, who immediately drops his gaze back to his own crown. It’s become an alternating pattern of dahlias, a vibrant yellow with orange splashed across their petals, and the same blue hydrangeas Lance had been debating. 

“No one said they couldn’t,” he mumbles. “And they’re pretty strong. . .”

From her corner of the picnic spread, Pidge starts cackling. She reaches out and grabs several strands of baby’s breath from the center of the blanket, where each flower sits grouped with its own kind and color. That had been at Pidge’s insistence, because what sort of monsters were they to not keep things neat? 

(Lance had scoffed at that notion, stating that he could be a monster if he wanted to, and had proceeded to take several of the flowers and place them in an uncoordinated heap before him. Pidge had simply rolled her eyes. All of it had left Shiro wondering where his kids had picked up any of these ideas only to be told ‘to get with the times’ and watch as all three of them fell victim to a fit of giggles. Keith had not helped by calling him ‘old man’ as he had walked back to the kitchen to refill their pitcher of lemonade.)

“Everyone gets to wear crowns,” Shiro affirms with a nod of his head. 

“Including you?”

“Including me, Hunk.”

“And Keith?”

“If he wants to.”

Hunk gives a low hum at that, studying his half-constructed crown. “He hasn’t made one yet.”

A rather troubling notion it would seem if Hunk’s expression is anything to go by. Shiro gives him a reassuring smile as he picks up a garden rose. It's white, small, and fragrant enough that he can smell it from his lap. Keeping his smile, he meets Hunk’s gaze directly, head dipping to bring him eye level with the eight-year-old. 

“He can share mine. How does that sound?”

Lance looks ready to stage a protest, but Pidge quickly squashes it with a punch to his thigh.

“That’s very magnanimous of you, Shiro.”

He blinks at that, thoroughly taken aback. She had stumbled a bit over the larger word, but there’s no mistaking what it was or whether it had been meant or not. It had been rather carefully selected and placed right where she wanted it. Clearing his throat, Shiro sits back up, and with the stem held between his thumb and index finger, he begins to bounce the flower up and down against his bare heel. 

“Pidge, where did you learn that word?”

Did he have to ask? Yes. Because where one big word makes an appearance, there’s the chance that other large, impressive and potentially explosive words might crop up too. 

This time, she’s the one blinking at him from behind her glasses. Like he is some sort of defanged tiger colored purple instead of orange and sporting squiggles where the stripes should have been. A truly fantastical beast that presented no real harm to her, just oddity. Like he should have known better. 

“It was on the T.V.”

“What show was this?”

“I don’t know. Keith was watching it.”

Shiro gives a soft snort at that, but before he can even think about how to confront the man he had married over this potential quagmire, Pidge is jumping right back at him with further explanation. How the hell a six-year-old could determine when to cut him off in his own thinking is beyond him.

That or he’s giving her way too much credit. 

When it comes to Pidge though, Shiro sometimes thinks he isn’t giving her enough credit. 

“He told me what the word meant. He even helped me spell it!” she explains, grinning at him as she pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose. They had slipped in her zeal to tell him that last part.

Spelling. The great challenge facing any elementary school student. A worthy conquest. 

“Helped you spell what?”

All four of them turn to look toward the house, where Keith has just emerged from the back door with a pitcher full of lemonade in his hands.

“A big word!”

“A stupid word!”

“Magnan-Magnanimous!”

Keith pulls to a halt at the edge of the blanket and wiggles his bare toes against the red-checkered fabric. “It’s a good word.”

Shiro notes how pleased he looks at that, even as he tosses Lance a quick chiding glance. ( _Stupid_ is not supposed to be in their vocabulary. At least not when used about one another.) Reaching up, he relieves Keith of the pitcher and Keith, in turn, relieves him of the rose. 

“Hosting private lessons now?” he teases, setting the pitcher in the wicker basket off to his right. 

Keith lifts an eyebrow at him. Another heartbeat is all it takes before a sly smirk starts coiling at the corner of his mouth. “I’ll give you one later if you want.”

Across from them, Lance starts snickering. He leans over toward Hunk, who cants his head closer, and over the small spats of laughter, Shiro can make out the whispered _he still has to go to school. . ._

If there had ever been a groan-worthy moment, that would have been it right there. Instead, Keith bumps his thigh with his foot, drawing Shiro's attention upward. He’s standing there, grinning like he had created the joke himself (he had. . .sort of) and believing that Shiro should find the humor in it as well.

“We spend every day learning,” Shiro calls out, pointedly staring at Lance. He gets a lip-splitting grin for that, teeth flashing white along with the hole right at the center where he had lost his first two incisors. Beside him, Hunk gives a sheepish laugh.

“Your dad is right,” Keith follows-up. “You never really stop being a student.”

Lance gives out the groan Shiro wishes he could have thirty seconds earlier. “Who wants to be a student forever?!”

That question comes with a burdened shrug of shoulders and a dead-weight flop of his hands against the ground. The flowers Lance had been holding, still mid-debate apparently, roll across his fingertips and onto the blanket beneath. 

Drama, thy middle name is Lance. Shiro only needs the flash of a glance from Keith to understand that sentiment completely. A small smile is shared between them, though it's interrupted several seconds later by another groan from Drama a.k.a Lance. 

“Gross,” he mutters, staring at them both like they had just regurgitated up math-problems or some other equally offensive equation all over the picnic scene.

Hunk has his nose wrinkled at them, while Pidge sits there, grinning like the Cheshire Cat throwing riddles before Alice. 

“Is this what you imagined when you adopted all three of them?” Keith whispers into his ear, and Shiro swears he can feel the wickedness in the curve of Keith’s lips as he says it. 

Turning his head slowly towards Keith, Shiro breathes out, then pokes the man square in the chest with his unfinished crown. “Is this what you imagined when you married me?”

It’s there in full, shameless regalia - that smirk sitting on Keith’s lips like it was born to possess them. His answer comes seconds later as he leans in with that smirk unrelenting. From the corner of his eye, Shiro catches Lance simulating the motions of vomiting as Keith kisses him. 

“Keith is the king!” Pidge yells out.

Honestly, he does not give that child enough credit. 

“Nu-uh! He doesn’t have a crown!” Hunk cries out, defensive and perhaps just a touch panicked. 

“A crown, huh?” Keith murmurs. He looks around, his gaze drifting from one child to the next, eyeing their crowns in turn. 

The looks of horror spawned by Keith’s perusal almost have Shiro laughing. That is until Keith sets his sights on him last, with a determined ferocity in his gaze and that same damnable smirk coronating his lips. 

With a small flourish of his wrist, Keith holds the white rose pointed at Shiro’s chest, right over the space of his heart. “Blam blam.”

Pidge gasps.

The words had come out so smoothly that Shiro is left sitting there, stunned, as he stares up at Keith. The ring over Keith's finger catches a ray of sunlight, the gold sparkling like a hope ignited, and Shiro almost does laugh. 

“You’re never going to let me live that down,” he whispers, throwing a hand over his chest and rolling himself down to the ground as Keith retrieves the crown.

“Form flower shield, Pidge!” Shiro directs, heaving through the imagined wound in his chest. “Hunk. . . .Lance. . .take him down. . .!”

Shifting onto his back, Shiro watches as the world erupts around him. To his left, Keith is cackling as he settles Shiro’s crown over his head. He hears the scuffling of legs and feet over the blanket, a roar bubbling up from Hunk’s chest. There are Pidge’s giggles as Keith wraps his arms around her, swinging her about clockwise, only to drop her right at Shiro’s side. 

The fatal mistake. 

Lance and Hunk charge forward, jumping onto Keith's back, and as they weigh him down, Pidge velcros herself to his left leg. Laughter comes out in shrieking bursts of sound until the entire chaotic mess collapses right against Shiro. He waits for a moment, listening to the low growls coming from Keith as he attacks one tickle spot after another, all the ensuing giggles and the shouted attempts at guiding retaliation. Then, with no warning, he rolls himself into the fray. 

Limbs are clinging to him, voices yelling encouragement, and somewhere under it all is Keith pressed to the ground, cheeks flushed and laughter escaping from his mouth. 

“Is this everything you imagined?” Shiro asks again, breathless.

Lance yodels victory as he climbs over Shiro’s back. He’s followed soon after by Pidge and Hunk, and through it all, Keith keeps laughing and laughing. 

Never had mayhem sounded so grounding.

“Yes,” he spills out. Grinning up at Shiro, he works an arm free and places the crown over Shiro’s head. “It’s perfect.”


End file.
